epi pen generic-most likely coming out in 2017

musicprnt
Mon, 29 Aug 2016 21:59:04 +0000

With health care, there always are several problems, with prescription drugs there are a lot of problems, the insurance companies don’t care because when faced with higher prices, they jack up rates, and due to anti trust legislation they cannot get together and negotiate with the drug companies en masse to force better prices, the drug middle men get what they can, and the drug companies are going to charge what the market will take, because there aren’t really any effective price controls per se, other than public outrage and eventually competition. Drug companies have ties with doctors that are claimed to be ‘informational’, that studies have shown cause doctors to prescribe a name brand drug even though for the person in question, an existing drug may work just as well. We also allow prescription drugs to be advertised, the US is one of only two countries that allow that, and that influences things, people see the add and want that miracle drug that shows someone supposedly with bad athritis dancing and chasing their dog…it is the whole system, but that doesn’t take Mylan or the CEO off the hook, it is kind of hard to cry it is everyone else’s fault, when her compensation in the period between when they bought the Epi Pen and today went up 6x (and please, no one give me how the board of the company decides that, that it reflects performance,etc, you believe the board of directors really do that I have a bridge to sell you).

@greenwitch:
The answer to your question is that Canada like many countries have limits placed on the cost of medicines that can be sold there, unlike the US drug companies have to sell at the price specified by the government or they can’t sell it there, pure and simple. Drug companies will tell you that the high cost of drugs in the US is because they need to recoup their losses in other countries, which unfortunately relies mostly on hearsay, I have not seen actual data that shows, for example, that whatever the wholesale price of the drug is in Canada or some European country, they lose money on it (from what I recall of those laws, and this goes back a while, they supposedly factor cost into the equation and then tack on a certain percentage for profit). The drug companies say they can only make a reasonable profit charging what they do in the US to offset those losses, critics say that isn’t true, that the Pharm industry is some of the more profitable companies around and that the high prices simply represent what they can get, given the lack of price controls in the US (the insurance companies don’t care, they just jack up rates, the middle men don’t care, they make money at any price level). The largest medical care providers in the country, medicare and medicaid, are not allowed to negotiate drug prices the way pharm middlemen can, by direct action of congress (Interestingly, I seem to recall the VA is allowed to do that).Medicaid and Medicare because of their size has big influence on medical pricing, and the pharm industry knew the consequences if they negotiated prices, it could lead to other insurance companies doing that, too.

And yep, you cannot legally buy Canadian drugs, and it has nothing to do with the safety of them (Canada’s drug laws are as strict, if not stricter, than in the US), it is because Canada has price controls and the US doesn’t.

Drug companies do have a point, with new product development it is expensive, it is some of the least productive R and D out there (few drugs that start the process of being developed make it to being an actual product), but there also are questions about how profitable the companies are, how much their executives make (and it is not a small amount), and the rate of return to shareholders. The problem is taking something that is mature and doing what Mylan did or Shvelli, and there can be repurcussions for that, and even with new drugs for all the claims of high development costs, the products who don’t make it, drug companies are some of the most profitable companies out there.

Again,. the head of Mylan isn’t wrong that the whole system is a mess, but that doesn’t absolve them in this situation.